


Bid You Welcome

by The_Rolling_Tomes



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: A pocketful of irreverence for canon, Dragons and dragon clans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:08:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26027734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Rolling_Tomes/pseuds/The_Rolling_Tomes
Summary: A cross-posting of the narrative-style lore introduction for my Flight Rising clan. Not a series in the making, just getting back into the practice of writing with this small thing.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Bid You Welcome

A dragon banked near the last broad steps carved into a plateau's more forgiving eastern incline, and alighted. The sea below and to the east sparkled with warm sunlight, glistering and chipper, its merry shushing sounds carried to him by an agreeable wind. That same wind tousled grass to the right and left of the steps, a green gone sun-blonde yet without the stiffness of parching. Even the longer, sturdier weeds stirred in an elastic way unique to the well-hydrated. Unkempt locks of his own mane stirred with them.

The view was lovely, and it was with some regret that the dragon turned to the task at hand, mounting the final few steps on foot. If all went well, he'd have plenty of time later to goggle at the view.

Cresting the top step, he was greeted by an eclectic tableau: several Imperial dragons lounging in the sunlight, two looking occupied with a book and platter of layered tiles respective to each, and a single fey dragon bedecked in silver and silk dragging a warped hunk of metal across the stones toward a growing pile of it at the center of the courtyard. She gripped her latest haul in her teeth and backpedaled with effort, a small but insistent _"nnnnyaaah!"_ accompanying each rearward yank.

"Enough of this." One of the self-occupied Imperials closed his book with an audible snap and slapped the heavy cover in a way that conveyed both disgruntlement and affection. "Felonax might've enumerated the means of revolution with a thoroughness, but he was artless and extolled none of its virtues. At best, he dealt a glancing blow to the perils of institutional thinki... who are you?"

The new dragon wondered at this question. _Who am I? I have no_ _idea._ "I heard tale of a clan within the Radiant territories that sometimes accepts," he decided less was more, "those like me. Are you the Rolling Tomes?"

The Imperial seemed to mull this over and examine him simultaneously. "Mayhap we are." His tone grew considering. "Engineering life not for you, huh?"

Frank. Artless. The new dragon wondered if his interviewer was related to Felonax and stowed the question before it could be articulated and get him in trouble. Instead, he agreed, "not for me." Forestalling the next likely question, he added, "I don't know what is."

The little fey deposited her burden among its glinting brethren and approached him. The silks she wore muted the jangling of her other finery. She looked up at him, fins splayed in curiosity, then shot her gaze downward and plucked a silver charm from his cloak. Wordlessly she turned and made her way back to her assemblage of metallic nonsense and added the charm to it.

The Imperial grunted. "Nyx likes you. That's a point in your favor."

The new dragon waited, having no idea what to do with this information. The bangle wouldn't be missed, but its removal had seemed as much an act of ritual as of bald-faced thievery.

"If you know who we are, you know what we do." The Imperial's amused regard grew guardedly welcoming. "Also what we don't." He gestured with a hand around him. "Plague, lightning, nature, wind, ice, we don't discriminate here. We're not in any business but guarding our own and defying tradition." He put his hand down over the book again. "You want to tinker, you can tinker. You want to sculpt, read, help Nyxie here amass the world's biggest pile of castoff metal, you can do that. We're a family, not an empire. Some of us are leaders, but we don't abide monarchies or the extinguishing of an individual's expression."

The Imperial shifted and spoke again. "Do well by us, and you've got a mismatched and raggedy band who'll navigate every red, fetid hell imaginable to the singular end that is your well-being. It's no godly blessing, but it's done us a solid." The assessing gaze returned and took his measure once more. "You in?"

He looked at the other dragons, some observing their conversation with mixed interest, others looking engrossed in their own business, and felt the quiet forces of cohesion between them. Sprawled like cats as they were, he sensed a greater readiness in waiting here than in any fighting organization he'd ever seen, an interlocked network of shared mind. He wanted of the powerful thing it was, the unconventional and slightly wild thing it was.

The new dragon nodded, still feeling as one treading snow of an unfamiliar depth but singularly unworried about it. "I'm in."

For the first time, the Imperial's neutral expression drew into a smile. He craned his neck forward. "Then I bid you welcome. Now I must ask you two questions."

He waited.

His interviewer tapped the great volume he'd snapped shut earlier. "Your name, of course, but we'll get to that. What I really want to know is this." His kaleidoscopic gaze changed almost imperceptibly, a galvanized truth exposed of some intellectually greedy inner nature now that the first formalities were out of the way, and the humor was back. "Alephenyx's poetry, for or against?"


End file.
